Europe in Motion
Europe's mountains
Europe has more mountain range than its reputation suggests, and most of it is not the Alps. These are the places where the mountain is the reason to go.
The query Any destination tagged Mountains. Run against all 319 destinations on every build, and nothing here is hand-picked — there is no field for naming a destination in a motion, deliberately. 115 match, in 33 countries; the 59 below are at most two per country.
All of them tagged Mountains.
Theth
A valley village of stone houses with no road in until recently, a lock-in tower, and a waterfall above it.
Andorra la Vella
Europe's highest capital at 1,023 metres, in a narrow valley, mostly shops with mountains directly behind them.
Madriu-Perafita-Claror
A glacial valley with no road into it, on the UNESCO list for a cultural landscape of summer pasture and stone huts.
Dilijan
A forested spa town called 'Armenian Switzerland', with two of the country's finest monasteries in the woods nearby.
Tatev
A 9th-century monastery on a cliff in the far south, reached by the world's longest reversible cable car.
Hallstatt
A lakeside village under a salt mountain, with 7,000 years of continuous mining and more visitors than it can hold.
Innsbruck
A university city at 574 metres with a 2,300-metre mountain reachable from the centre in twenty minutes.
Sheki
A silk road town under wooded mountains, with a khan's summer palace whose windows are built without glue or nails.
Xınalıq
A village at 2,300 metres whose people speak a language related to nothing else, reached by a single mountain road.
Sarajevo
An Ottoman bazaar at one end of a street and Habsburg apartment blocks at the other, in a valley ringed by mountains.
Travnik
The Ottoman viziers' capital for 150 years, under a fortress, with a coloured mosque and a spring beneath it.
Bansko
A stone-built mountain town under Pirin, with cheap skiing in winter and hut-to-hut walking in summer.
Rila Monastery
A fortified monastery in a forested valley, founded in the 10th century, with striped arcades and frescoes over every surface.
Plitvice Lakes
Sixteen terraced lakes falling into each other over travertine barriers that are still growing.
Omodos & the wine villages
Cobbled mountain villages growing indigenous grapes nobody else has, around a 12th-century monastery.
Český ráj (Turnov)
'Bohemian Paradise': sandstone towers, rock cities and castles on pinnacles, ninety minutes from Prague.
Annecy
A canal town on the cleanest large lake in Europe, with the Alps standing straight up behind it.
Beaune
The wine capital of Burgundy, inside its own walls, on the most valuable agricultural land on earth.
Mestia, Svaneti
A mountain region of defensive stone towers built by families against each other, under 5,000-metre peaks.
Stepantsminda (Kazbegi)
A village under a 5,047-metre volcano, with a 14th-century church on a spur above it.
Berchtesgaden
An alpine corner surrounded on three sides by Austria, with a fjord-green lake below the Watzmann.
Munich
A wealthy southern capital with the Alps an hour away and a river you can surf in the middle of a park.
Chania, Crete
A Venetian harbour with an Ottoman quarter behind it, on an island large enough to be its own country.
Delphi
The navel of the ancient world, on a terrace of Mount Parnassus above a sea of olive trees.
Höfn & Jökulsárlón
A langoustine port beside Europe's largest ice cap, where icebergs float out to sea past a car park.
Vík í Mýrdal
A village of three hundred under a glacier, with black sand and dangerous surf.
Bellagio & Lake Como
A village on the point where the lake divides, with villa gardens on both arms and ferries between them.
Milan
Italy's working city: fashion, design, finance, and a Last Supper that has to be booked months ahead.
Peja & Rugova
A bazaar town at the mouth of a limestone gorge, with a patriarchate monastery and the Accursed Mountains behind.
Prizren
A river town of mosques, Orthodox churches and a stone bridge, under a fortress with the whole valley below it.
Malbun
The country's only ski area, in a high bowl at 1,600 metres, with marmots and a chairlift.
Vaduz
A capital of 5,700 people under a castle the prince actually lives in, with a black concrete art museum on the main street.
Echternach
The country's oldest town, with a 7th-century abbey and a hopping procession on the UNESCO list.
Vianden
A restored hilltop castle above a river village, where Victor Hugo spent his exile.
Kotor
A walled Venetian town at the head of the bay, with fortifications climbing 260 metres up the cliff behind it.
Žabljak
The highest town in the Balkans at 1,450 metres, at the edge of Durmitor national park.
Balestrand
A Sognefjord village of dragon-style timber villas, where 19th-century painters came and then stayed.
Bergen
A hanseatic trading port wedged between seven mountains, wet 200 days a year and entirely unbothered about it.
Kraków
The royal capital that survived the war, with Europe's largest medieval square and a Jewish quarter that is now a district again.
Zakopane & the Tatras
A wooden mountain town under the only alpine range in Poland, with its own architectural style.
Brașov
A Saxon town under a wooded mountain, with the largest gothic church between Vienna and Istanbul.
Sighișoara
A walled Saxon citadel still lived in, with a clock tower and a covered stairway to a hilltop school.
City of San Marino
A walled town at 750 metres with three towers along the crest and the Adriatic visible on a clear day.
Mokra Gora
A mountain village on the Šargan Eight, a narrow-gauge line that climbs a figure of eight to gain height.
Studenica
A 12th-century monastery of white marble in a wooded valley, with frescoes from 1209 and monks still living there.
Levoča & the Spiš
A walled medieval town with the tallest wooden altar in the world, under the ruins of Spiš castle.
Poprad & the High Tatras
The gateway town to a 26-kilometre range that reaches 2,655 metres and behaves like the Alps.
Bled
An island church in a glacial lake under a cliff-top castle — the most photographed thing in the country and still lovely at 7 am.
Bovec & the Soča
An alpine valley on an unreally turquoise river, and the front line of the Isonzo battles above it.
Albarracín
A pink town wrapped in a river bend and a wall that climbs the ridge above it, in one of Europe's emptiest provinces.
Barcelona
A Roman city inside a medieval city inside a 19th-century grid, with Gaudí's work scattered across all three.
Abisko
A rain-shadowed valley with Sweden's clearest winter skies and the northern end of its greatest trail.
Kiruna
An iron-ore town so successful at mining that it is being physically moved, building by building, off the hole it dug.
Bern
The federal capital: six kilometres of arcades, a river you swim down, and Einstein's flat above a café.
Lauterbrunnen
A valley with vertical walls and seventy-two waterfalls, and car-free villages on the shelves above it.
Fethiye & the Lycian coast
Rock-cut tombs in the cliffs above a harbour, and a 540-kilometre coastal path starting nearby.
Lviv
An Austro-Hungarian city with an intact centre on the UNESCO list, a coffee tradition and a chocolate one.
Cardiff
A coal port turned capital, with a fantasy castle in the middle and a rugby stadium that empties into the streets.
Edinburgh
A medieval spine running down from a castle on a plug of volcanic rock, with a Georgian grid alongside.
Journeys that go this way
Midnight sun to hanseatic brick
Arctic to the Baltic
Tromsø · Lofoten (Svolvær) · Abisko · Stockholm · Helsinki · Tallinn · Riga
Six valleys, four countries, one mountain range
The Alpine Grand Tour
Chamonix · Zermatt · Lauterbrunnen · St. Moritz & the Engadin · Innsbruck · Ortisei & the Dolomites
Mountains, monasteries and very few visitors
The Carpathian Arc
Kraków · Zakopane & the Tatras · Poprad & the High Tatras · Levoča & the Spiš · Sighișoara · Viscri · Brașov · Gura Humorului & the painted monasteries
Themes that run through it
Eight ranges, one continent
Mountain Europe
Chamonix · Lauterbrunnen · Ortisei & the Dolomites · Zakopane & the Tatras · Mestia, Svaneti · Picos de Europa (Cangas de Onís) · Žabljak · Theth
Journeys where the train is the destination
Rail Europe
Flåm · St. Moritz & the Engadin · Bacharach & the Rhine Gorge · Mokra Gora · Eryri / Snowdonia (Betws-y-Coed) · Pinhão & the Douro valley · Abisko · Lauterbrunnen
Build this into a route
The Journey Planner weights the same tags this page queries on, so choosing Mountains there will build a route through places like these. Plan a journey → · Discover mode →